A Question about Analysis Method

Latin Learning Latin
1

Dear all language-friends!

I have taught myself several old Indo-european language such as Latin, New Testament Greek, Pāḷi etc. Now I am teaching Pāḷi - my holy religious language - for both buddhists and lay men. Cause what I have learnt is from English resources: textbooks, books, articles… I teach the analysis method as I have taken from those resources. In summary, that is: identifying every word with its basic grammatical information such as: word-category (noun, verb…); its declension/conjugation… and meaning; then analyzing contexts and identify the word’s function, such as: Nominative as Subject, Accusative of Aim, Ablative of Cause, Genetive as Subject etc… and finally synthesizing into the whole meaning.

My question is in other European as Germany, France… is this method applied (at least in universities/colleges)?

Sincerely yours,

Khanh

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Hello, Khanh.

There are several teaching methods, and your way is similar to Structural Approach. It is popular in my place too. The National Latin Exam (US) is based more on Grammar-Translation method. I heard that Direct method, focused on oral skill (also called Conversational method), has become very popular in Europe in last 5 years.

Popular Latin courses:

  • Grammar-Translation method: Wheelock’s Latin
  • Natural approach: Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata (by Hans Ørberg).

Ancient Greek:

There are other good courses not popular yet, or I’m not familiar with.

P.S. In fact, most of the teachers use some combination of these methods, and very seldom follow a strict methodology.

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Thanks so much. It is very interesting! Even in Pāḷi the grammar-translation is still prevalent.

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In Second Language Acquisition, there is an intensive opposition between Grammar-Translation and Natural methods. You can easily find something like this.

Among other, their proponents argue how to supply the students with grammar. I read somewhere that the idea to concentrate on the grammar arose about XV or XVI century, (and from that moment pupils stopped speaking Latin fluently.)

Evidently, Grammar-Translation followers demands that the students have to memorize all declension/conjugation rules. Prominent examples are Dowling’s Wheel or Ranieri-Dowling Method. Wheelock’s course teaches the same rules step by step.

Direct method supposes that the students don’t have grammar tables, but infer all rules by themselves, simply reading (well-prepared) texts. For example, here is how Polis’ Ancient Greek textbook (page 27) introduces the verb εἰμί (to be) in present time:

Some teachers say that it’s more important to memorize vocabulary. If you know every word in a sentence, then you can understand its meaning. In case of poetry with very lax word order, it can be tricky. For example, Boethius, Metrum XII:

Quae sontes agitant metu
Ultrices scelerum Deae,
Jam maestae lacrimis madent.

We can take a paraphrase of these lines made by Callyus for the edition ‘In usum Delphini’:

Deae vindices criminum, quae timore concutiunt nocentes, tristes hument fletibus.

Now, it’s much easier. Reading the original text and its simplified versions, you can accustom to the Latin word order.

In LLPSI, Ørber utilizes both approaches. He gives tables with rules, but also extensively practice them on reading big texts.

Students are different as well. Some are prone to rote-learning, some are better in perception of audio, or learning through action. I personally prefer to read interesting stories (i.e., Graded Readers in the beginning level).

Correct grammar is needed only in Writing. Other three skills—Reading, Listening, and Speaking—do not depend on it much. In spoken language, even in our mother tongue, we make many mistakes but still understand each other.

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Some interesting points made so far. Regarding correct grammar, I’d say there are cases where it’s fundamental for all skills. In a pro-drop language like Spanish (or Latin or Greek) you absolutely have to get the verb conjugations right in order to understand or formulate even simple sentences. For example, “No quiero” and “No quieren” mean different things, and it’s the grammar that tells you the difference.

In English, on the other hand, learners can get away with saying things like “He want” because the mistake doesn’t affect the meaning.

Conditional sentences are an interesting example. I remember spending ages on them when learning Greek, only to discover that when reading real texts the context normally makes the meaning clear anyway.

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Thanks all

I have both Wheelock’s & Hans H. Ørberg’s textbook; so I get the point about difference between the 2 methods - Grammar/Translation & Natural.

The thing, however, makes me a little bit confused is the difference between the Structural Approach & the Grammar/Translation Approach (Method). Both of them are about grammar-rules. In my opinion, the Grammar/Translation has all the rules available and the learners just memorize as well as apply by doing exercise of translation. They know the rules and use the rules, but knot aware HOW THE RULES ARE FORMED; they do not analyze the rules.

For example:

Caesar venit Athenam vincere Graecos.

The Grammar/Translation learners just render ‘Caesar come to Athens to conquer the Greeks’ due to the rules they already memorized.

But the Structural Approach learners must parse the sentence in details:

Caesar: nominative as subject of the verb ‘Venit’
Venit: 3rd present indicative active: narrates the action ‘go’
Athenam: accusative of Destiny for ‘venit’
Vincere: infinitive of Purpose for the verb ‘venit’
Graecos: direct object of ‘vincere’

So, all those above make the meaning ‘Caesar come to Athens to conquer the Greeks’ possible and plausible.

Am I right?

I have read many books, articles about the Structural Linguistics. But till now, I usually ask myself: what are the things of Structural Linguistics in modern grammar textbooks/books; or how do I know that this or that book was written under/by the influence of Structural Lingtuistics?

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@testsuda

Here is a recent blog-post Why the Cult of the One True Textbook Has to Stop by Carla Hurt. It’s rather emotional, so not truly objective, but the author discusses many modern technics used in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) based on academic research in this field.

Carla is a proponent of Comprehensible Input (CI), i.e. extensive reading, and I find her collection of class activities practical and useful. She has been teaching Latin for more than 10 years, so even if your teaching strategy is different, this blog worth it to read and learn her experience.

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But there are many, many people on the internet – usually not teachers, but self-learners – who, typing reviews in their echo chambers, collectively shout from the rooftops that LLPSI is the theoretical pinnacle of language learning, and the canonical method of using it is to be uncritically followed without deviation from the author Ørberg’s intent.

I’m glad someone is posting Carla’s little article. I’m always surprised to see such vehemence online, given the academy’s relatively lack of interest in Ørberg. I’ve yet to meet a person who solely used this book and still knew the language inside out, which led to some wild mistakes.

Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Limiting yourself is crippling your education, and those who lack education tend to misuse their native language.

No educator worth their salt will rely solely on a single textbook.

There are more than just these two textbooks, you know! Wheelock’s has its own problem.

The thing, however, makes me a little bit confused is the difference between the Structural Approach & the Grammar/Translation Approach (Method). Both of them are about grammar-rules. In my opinion, the Grammar/Translation has all the rules available and the learners just memorize as well as apply by doing exercise of translation. They know the rules and use the rules, but knot aware HOW THE RULES ARE FORMED; they do not analyze the rules.

For example:

Caesar venit Athenam vincere Graecos.

The Grammar/Translation learners just render ‘Caesar come to Athens to conquer the Greeks’ due to the rules they already memorized.

But the Structural Approach learners must parse the sentence in details:

[ – snip – ]

Am I right?

Ignoring the grammar problems of your example sentence for a moment, no, GT method and this “Structural” method you’ve outlined are identical. In both cases, you’re parsing the words and connecting them to their proper role in a sentence.

You should also note that structural linguistics is a completely different beast.

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Hi, I think a combination of the older methods focusing on grammar, and the newer methods focusing on comprehensible input, is better than either in isolation.

PS I suppose you already realise that ‘Caesar venit Athenam vincere Graecos’ is not correct Latin (it’s more like an English sentence with each English word converted into its Latin equivalent, other than the word for Athens which should be in the plural, and not following the prose rules for expressing purpose after a verb of motion)?

Cheers, Chad

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Having taught for well over twice the time she has at the high school, college, and university level, I will say there is no ‘correct’ way other than the way that works for each individual. I have used 5 different text collections, from the awful Latin for Americans (still not sure what approach that one was using, it was so bad), to the okay but lacking in sufficient exercise material reading approaches of Latin via Ovid and Cambridge series, to the (in my eyes) very good, but very different Wheelock’s Latin and LLPSI, and, aside from the Latin for Americans, I have incorporated elements from them all in my teaching. They all have their pros and cons. I will also say that never have I taught the individual classes in the same way. What works for one may flop for another. One caveat with my commentary here though: I thoroughly dislike the ‘teaching of education practices’ and her extensive use of the technical jargon of that field did strike a nerve in reading what she wrote.

As an addendum, one thing that I have found particularly effective is present difficult concepts without giving more than a very general introduction (and not using the intimidating grammar terms). For instance, with indirect statement, I gave a class passages with that in it, without giving detailed explanations of how indirect statement works. They breezed right through the indirect statements in the passage with no problem whatsoever. The looks on the faces when I them that they had just learned how the ‘accusative subject of the infinitive in indirect discourse’ works, showed me that I had taken the right approach. Everyone of them thanked me for not using that terminology until afterwards.

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Agreed, Ronolio! A versatile and adaptable multi-pronged approach is best.

Latin Via Ovid could be so good if only it were allowed to be revised and updated.

As an addendum, one thing that I have found particularly effective is present difficult concepts without giving more than a very general introduction (and not using the intimidating grammar terms). For instance, with indirect statement, I gave a class passages with that in it, without giving detailed explanations of how indirect statement works. They breezed right through the indirect statements in the passage with no problem whatsoever. The looks on the faces when I them that they had just learned how the ‘accusative subject of the infinitive in indirect discourse’ works, showed me that I had taken the right approach. Everyone of them thanked me for not using that terminology until afterwards.

For beginner’s, labels are helpful after the phenomenon has been studies. For advanced students, labels are helpful upfront in order to connect new knowledge with learned knowledge. When going from Latin to Greek, I didn’t need to learn the phenomenon of a conditional sentence first, because I was already comfortable with them from a different language. Young students learning a synthetic language for the first time will benefit from being eased into it. But going from Latin to e.g. French, that hand-holding is frustratingly slow.

That’s my experience, at least.

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Yes, my sentence is not good Latin. I know Structural Linguistics is completely different; but its approach seems approriate here: we can treat a Latin sentence as a system/structure with its words as components; the sentence’s meaning is a system property that needs to be investigated through analyzing and combining all suitable properties of all components. If that is right, it seems that the approach is not quite new

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This article appears to expound a tried and tested Grammar First approach https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/3-methods-teaching-latin/?srsltid=AfmBOoq6DbmQFBll-x0ReaZoXXYu89LxTsYes7dFmz5kTg0iAjQtCxc_.

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I don’t agree with the Grammar First approach, but I appreciate that they differentiate Grammar First from Grammar-Translation, something which many proponents of Comprehensible Input seem unable to do.

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Knudsvig’s Latin for Reading (pardon me if you’ve already mentioned it) can be found on the archive. He uses a structural approach.